DK: No, really, what'll it take to fire Cherington, Shelton?
This was New York in 2019. I can't recall much more about the setting or circumstance, other than one very tenured, very talented player in the Pirates' clubhouse motioning for me to approach his stall.
"I'm done," he told me, under his breath. "This team f---ing sucks."
He'd be correct on all counts. He was, in fact, done. He'd demand a trade soon after that season, and he'd have that granted. And yeah, his assessment of that team was dead-on, too, and it'd cost Neal Huntington and Clint Hurdle, among many others, their respective jobs when Bob Nutting cleaned house that fall.
Funny thing: The team's worse now.
Not-so-funny thing: It doesn't seem that the general manager and manager today, Ben Cherington and Derek Shelton, can do anything to merit that same reaction, no matter how awful the player acquisition in all forms, no matter how abysmal the development at all levels, no matter how embarrassing the fundamentals in all facets, no matter how emasculated the hitting.
• A 12-23 start hasn't done it.
That's the record now, after a 4-0 loss to the Padres this afternoon at PNC Park that. Only 53 teams in Major League Baseball history have had single-digit win totals through 35 games, including the 1952 Pirates at 6-29 and, of course, the infamous Pittsburg Alleghenys at 9-26.
Damned right I'm running that photo again:
CARNEGIE LIBRARY OF PITTSBURGH
The 1890 Pittsburg Alleghenys, Recreation Park.
These guys, who are spared from rock bottom in the majors only by the White Sox and Rockies, are barely better than those guys.
The 2019 team, by the way, started out 18-17.
• A 3-15 record against teams currently above .500 hasn't done it.
Sure, the Padres are 22-11 and again contending -- while playing in a market comparable to Pittsburgh, I should add -- but this is Year 6 for Cherington and Shelton, and this was supposed to be the year they'd at least blossom into being competitive.
"It's time to win," Shelton would say in mid-February of what he spoke in the annual pre-spring meeting with the assembled group in Bradenton, Fla. "We talked about winning. We talked about the expectation of winning."
Yeah, when the Nationals limp into town. Other teams have had their own hell-and-back rebuilds in the same span and somehow succeeded, even with similar payrolls, and yet the gap here only grows.
• A bigger-scope view hasn't done it.
Get this: Shelton's record of 306-437 -- which obviously would also be Cherington's record -- is the worst in the sport's history for any manager in that manager's first five-plus seasons with the same team.
I mean, just stop reading here, yeah?
Every other owner since the bleeping Civil War saw fit to get rid of every single manager who'd ever failed at this scale.
Footnote: The final four years of Huntington/Hurdle was 304-342-1, a .470 winning percentage compared to this ongoing .412 percentage. And never mind that the three previous seasons saw rousing playoff appearances, capped by a 98-win total in 2015.
• A .641 OPS, third-worst in the majors, hasn't done it.
A smart new hitting coach, Matt Hague, has only further exposed that Cherington's been the problem with the offense all along. As one veteran scout recently told me, "He wouldn't recognize Mickey Mantle from Mickey Mouse," and it's indisputable. In Pittsburgh, the team's top three hitters remain Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds, both acquired by Huntington, and Andrew McCutchen, acquired by Dave Littlefield.
The starting lineup on this day had one player internally acquired by Cherington, and that's Henry Davis, a No. 1 overall pick who's a .143-hitting backup catcher at age 25.
More painful by far, considering Cherington's early wave of trades aimed at adding prospects: Of the minor-league system's current top 30 prospects per Baseball America, 14 are hitters. And of those 14, only three have an OPS over .800, all of them in Class A.
Oh, and this: The 2019 team averaged 4.68 runs per game. This one's at 3.26.
• A subpar overall system hasn't done it.
The Pirates' system is ranked 16th by Baseball America, barely above 20th in 2019. Despite all those trades. Despite Cherington having invested $69 million drafting 90 players and another $26 million to sign 108 international free agents.
And in Pittsburgh, the only Cherington amateur acquisitions are Paul Skenes, who would've been the top pick in his class if the old lady in line behind you at Giant Eagle had been in charge, plus Davis, Carmen Mlodzinski, injured Jared Jones and injured Nick Gonzales.
It's Year 6.
• Yet another terrible trade hasn't done it.
Cherington's signature move of this past offseason, even allowing for blaming Nutting for the payroll staying far too low, was a trade that sent Luis Ortiz to the Guardians for Spencer Horwitz, a platoon-hitting, minimal-power first baseman -- which all by itself sounds like it belongs on the Island of Misfit Toys -- who arrived with a known chronic wrist issue.
Known. Chronic. Wrist. Issue.
And still hasn't been seen in this lineup. He's rehabbing with Class AA Altoona, where he's 2 for 16 through five games.
Ortiz has taken a regular turn in Cleveland's rotation and, after being bombed in his first start, he's put up a 3.29 ERA in the five starts since. He's 26 and still being paid the major-league minimum wage.
• Disguising the future hasn't done it.
Cutch, respectfully, is 38. Tommy Pham's 37 and batting .184. Adam Frazier's 33 and batting .227. That's one-third of the default everyday lineup. I can throw in that Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Bryan Reynolds are both 30. That's now the majority.
Nothing's being built there.
Have I mentioned it's Year 6?
• Bad baseball hasn't done it.
No need for analytics, advanced or otherwise, on this one.
All anyone needs to evaluate is that, in this game alone, the Pirates made a half-dozen mistakes that ranged from glaring to grotesque, like this:
There's no baseball reality in which those don't reflect first and foremost on Shelton. Just as there's no baseball reality in which a manager, particularly one whose tenure has been pretty much defined by a lack of palpable accountability, should survive that singular charge.
• Cherington's self-immolating quotes haven't done it.
These are relentless in their inanity, week after week, but even so,this one from todayon his weekly radio show holds high honors: "We should not be patient about getting better today. It certainly starts with me and it doesn't end with me. That's gotta extend to everybody on our team. We all have to be urgent, and not patient, about getting better. What are the things we can do to do our own jobs a little bit better today in a way that adds up to wins long term? Let's not be patient about it."
What in the flying ... ?
Let the record show that Cherington's always interviewed on that show by a team employee. He hasn't been available to media in two weeks. He was at PNC Park for the show.
Speaking of accountability.
• A near-revolt by the fans hasn't done it.
The ‘SELL! THE! TEAM!’ chants have become almost as common as the boos, and the only reason there weren't any on this day is that there's never much negativity on a Sunday here, given all the families and children at hand.
But otherwise, it's been unlike any general scene I've covered in sports. Fans are furious, and they're vocalizing it every available forum.
They're also ... not showing up: The crowd of 17,184 on this day was boosted by some Star Wars toy giveaway, and even that not by much. Friday saw 12,349, and Saturday 17,675, both less than half-capacity. In 2015, the average crowds were 34,380 on Fridays, 37,300 on Saturdays.
• No one appearing to give a crap ... that hasn't done it, either.
There's nothing happening here, my friends. Nothing at all. The people in charge have nothing to say, much less do. The players in the clubhouse ... man, that place was deader after this game than a mortuary after the foreclosure. I was in and out of there within five minutes, and I can't recall having done that in two decades on this beat.
But don't take my word for it. Watch them watch strike three with the bases loaded. Watch them get dominated by some dude making his big-league debut, like San Diego sent out there today. Watch them mope between pitches. Watch their dugout, where less than half the players are up against the railing.
Watch how they've accepted all of this.
____________________
There. That's 11 stomach-turning-for-everyone-else things that haven't gotten these people fired yet. One for each of the 11 games they're already under .500 on the opening weekend of May.
Funny thing: Maybe someday, if there's ever anyone moved to substantively caring amid all this complacency, someone will share a stinging assessment like that one I was told in 2019, and they'd be even more right.
Not-so-funny thing: None of what's above even begins to change until Nutting fires everyone.
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THE ASYLUM
Dejan Kovacevic
9:52 pm - 05.04.2025North ShoreDK: No, really, what'll it take to fire Cherington, Shelton?
This was New York in 2019. I can't recall much more about the setting or circumstance, other than one very tenured, very talented player in the Pirates' clubhouse motioning for me to approach his stall.
"I'm done," he told me, under his breath. "This team f---ing sucks."
He'd be correct on all counts. He was, in fact, done. He'd demand a trade soon after that season, and he'd have that granted. And yeah, his assessment of that team was dead-on, too, and it'd cost Neal Huntington and Clint Hurdle, among many others, their respective jobs when Bob Nutting cleaned house that fall.
Funny thing: The team's worse now.
Not-so-funny thing: It doesn't seem that the general manager and manager today, Ben Cherington and Derek Shelton, can do anything to merit that same reaction, no matter how awful the player acquisition in all forms, no matter how abysmal the development at all levels, no matter how embarrassing the fundamentals in all facets, no matter how emasculated the hitting.
• A 12-23 start hasn't done it.
That's the record now, after a 4-0 loss to the Padres this afternoon at PNC Park that. Only 53 teams in Major League Baseball history have had single-digit win totals through 35 games, including the 1952 Pirates at 6-29 and, of course, the infamous Pittsburg Alleghenys at 9-26.
Damned right I'm running that photo again:
CARNEGIE LIBRARY OF PITTSBURGH
The 1890 Pittsburg Alleghenys, Recreation Park.
These guys, who are spared from rock bottom in the majors only by the White Sox and Rockies, are barely better than those guys.
The 2019 team, by the way, started out 18-17.
• A 3-15 record against teams currently above .500 hasn't done it.
Sure, the Padres are 22-11 and again contending -- while playing in a market comparable to Pittsburgh, I should add -- but this is Year 6 for Cherington and Shelton, and this was supposed to be the year they'd at least blossom into being competitive.
"It's time to win," Shelton would say in mid-February of what he spoke in the annual pre-spring meeting with the assembled group in Bradenton, Fla. "We talked about winning. We talked about the expectation of winning."
Yeah, when the Nationals limp into town. Other teams have had their own hell-and-back rebuilds in the same span and somehow succeeded, even with similar payrolls, and yet the gap here only grows.
• A bigger-scope view hasn't done it.
Get this: Shelton's record of 306-437 -- which obviously would also be Cherington's record -- is the worst in the sport's history for any manager in that manager's first five-plus seasons with the same team.
I mean, just stop reading here, yeah?
Every other owner since the bleeping Civil War saw fit to get rid of every single manager who'd ever failed at this scale.
Footnote: The final four years of Huntington/Hurdle was 304-342-1, a .470 winning percentage compared to this ongoing .412 percentage. And never mind that the three previous seasons saw rousing playoff appearances, capped by a 98-win total in 2015.
• A .641 OPS, third-worst in the majors, hasn't done it.
A smart new hitting coach, Matt Hague, has only further exposed that Cherington's been the problem with the offense all along. As one veteran scout recently told me, "He wouldn't recognize Mickey Mantle from Mickey Mouse," and it's indisputable. In Pittsburgh, the team's top three hitters remain Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds, both acquired by Huntington, and Andrew McCutchen, acquired by Dave Littlefield.
The starting lineup on this day had one player internally acquired by Cherington, and that's Henry Davis, a No. 1 overall pick who's a .143-hitting backup catcher at age 25.
More painful by far, considering Cherington's early wave of trades aimed at adding prospects: Of the minor-league system's current top 30 prospects per Baseball America, 14 are hitters. And of those 14, only three have an OPS over .800, all of them in Class A.
Oh, and this: The 2019 team averaged 4.68 runs per game. This one's at 3.26.
• A subpar overall system hasn't done it.
The Pirates' system is ranked 16th by Baseball America, barely above 20th in 2019. Despite all those trades. Despite Cherington having invested $69 million drafting 90 players and another $26 million to sign 108 international free agents.
And in Pittsburgh, the only Cherington amateur acquisitions are Paul Skenes, who would've been the top pick in his class if the old lady in line behind you at Giant Eagle had been in charge, plus Davis, Carmen Mlodzinski, injured Jared Jones and injured Nick Gonzales.
It's Year 6.
• Yet another terrible trade hasn't done it.
Cherington's signature move of this past offseason, even allowing for blaming Nutting for the payroll staying far too low, was a trade that sent Luis Ortiz to the Guardians for Spencer Horwitz, a platoon-hitting, minimal-power first baseman -- which all by itself sounds like it belongs on the Island of Misfit Toys -- who arrived with a known chronic wrist issue.
Known. Chronic. Wrist. Issue.
And still hasn't been seen in this lineup. He's rehabbing with Class AA Altoona, where he's 2 for 16 through five games.
Ortiz has taken a regular turn in Cleveland's rotation and, after being bombed in his first start, he's put up a 3.29 ERA in the five starts since. He's 26 and still being paid the major-league minimum wage.
• Disguising the future hasn't done it.
Cutch, respectfully, is 38. Tommy Pham's 37 and batting .184. Adam Frazier's 33 and batting .227. That's one-third of the default everyday lineup. I can throw in that Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Bryan Reynolds are both 30. That's now the majority.
Nothing's being built there.
Have I mentioned it's Year 6?
• Bad baseball hasn't done it.
No need for analytics, advanced or otherwise, on this one.
All anyone needs to evaluate is that, in this game alone, the Pirates made a half-dozen mistakes that ranged from glaring to grotesque, like this:
There's no baseball reality in which those don't reflect first and foremost on Shelton. Just as there's no baseball reality in which a manager, particularly one whose tenure has been pretty much defined by a lack of palpable accountability, should survive that singular charge.
• Cherington's self-immolating quotes haven't done it.
These are relentless in their inanity, week after week, but even so, this one from today on his weekly radio show holds high honors: "We should not be patient about getting better today. It certainly starts with me and it doesn't end with me. That's gotta extend to everybody on our team. We all have to be urgent, and not patient, about getting better. What are the things we can do to do our own jobs a little bit better today in a way that adds up to wins long term? Let's not be patient about it."
What in the flying ... ?
Let the record show that Cherington's always interviewed on that show by a team employee. He hasn't been available to media in two weeks. He was at PNC Park for the show.
Speaking of accountability.
• A near-revolt by the fans hasn't done it.
The ‘SELL! THE! TEAM!’ chants have become almost as common as the boos, and the only reason there weren't any on this day is that there's never much negativity on a Sunday here, given all the families and children at hand.
But otherwise, it's been unlike any general scene I've covered in sports. Fans are furious, and they're vocalizing it every available forum.
They're also ... not showing up: The crowd of 17,184 on this day was boosted by some Star Wars toy giveaway, and even that not by much. Friday saw 12,349, and Saturday 17,675, both less than half-capacity. In 2015, the average crowds were 34,380 on Fridays, 37,300 on Saturdays.
That's a lot of money being lost. Literally.
• No one appearing to give a crap ... that hasn't done it, either.
There's nothing happening here, my friends. Nothing at all. The people in charge have nothing to say, much less do. The players in the clubhouse ... man, that place was deader after this game than a mortuary after the foreclosure. I was in and out of there within five minutes, and I can't recall having done that in two decades on this beat.
But don't take my word for it. Watch them watch strike three with the bases loaded. Watch them get dominated by some dude making his big-league debut, like San Diego sent out there today. Watch them mope between pitches. Watch their dugout, where less than half the players are up against the railing.
Watch how they've accepted all of this.
____________________
There. That's 11 stomach-turning-for-everyone-else things that haven't gotten these people fired yet. One for each of the 11 games they're already under .500 on the opening weekend of May.
Funny thing: Maybe someday, if there's ever anyone moved to substantively caring amid all this complacency, someone will share a stinging assessment like that one I was told in 2019, and they'd be even more right.
Not-so-funny thing: None of what's above even begins to change until Nutting fires everyone.
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Want an ad-free experience?
Become a member, and enjoy premium benefits! Make your voice heard on the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates, and hear right back from tens of thousands of fellow Pittsburgh sports fans worldwide! Plus, access all our premium content, including Dejan Kovacevic columns, Friday Insider, daily Live Qs with the staff, more! And yeah, that's right, no ads at all!
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